Sexual Orientation and Human Rights

"Lesbian and gay rights are human rights!" Is this just a political slogan to be chanted outside legislatures? Or are there legal arguments to support the claim that the right to be free from sexual orientation discrimination is a human right? In particular, can national constitutions or international human rights treaties be interpreted as prohibiting discrimination against same-sex activity, gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals, and same-sex couples? Robert Wintemute attempts to answer these questions by examining three of the most commonly used arguments in favour of such an interpretation: sexual orientation is an "immutable status", sexual orientation is a "fundamental choice" (or part of "privacy"), and sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination. To assess their merits, he looks at their relative success and failure in cases argued under three of the world's most influential human rights instruments: the United States Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This book is intended for academics and practitioners interested in human rights, constitutional law, sexual orientation descrimination, anti-di

'The chapters dealing with the various jurisdictions provide a succinct and useful compendium of the recent emerging jurisprudence mainly focusing upon litigation relating to gay men...Wintemute's scholarship draws attention to the importance of law in general and civil and human rights litigation in particular...Wintemute's book is a useful vehicle through which to problematize the law/politics binary.', 'ambitious, scholarly and meticulously referenced...Wintemute has produced a wide-ranging, extensively detailed and yet accessible piece of scholarship...As a source book for references Wintemute's work is to be particularly commended.' Public Law, offers a comprehensive, item by item examination of legislation and case law, "Because the legal status of gays remains a matter of hot controversy in the United States, the news about these foreign developments is important. For this reason, Robert Wintemute's "Sexual Orientation and Human Rights" makes a valuable contribution. It carefully surveys gay rights decisions under three major human rights instruments; I know of no comparative study in this area that is more thorough. The book is also, however, an essay in constructive legal theory.", "... his work brings to its subject a rare combination of legal learning and moral insight which, quite apart from living up to its amibition of making a powerful case for legal measures against discrimination on grounds of sexuality, does much, and certainly more than it advertises itself as doing, to illuminate the structure, scope, and significance of anti-discrimination law as a whole."

Robert Wintemute has been a Lecturer in the School of Law at King's College, University of London since 1991.